Rationale

The WNSW Integrated Care Strategy is a ground-breaking approach to implementing locally driven, regionally enabled integrated care across a large rural health district. The strategy provides the opportunity for reform in health care and also to build the evidence base for system-wide approaches to integrated care. Findings will contribute to shaping the development of integrated care at the regional and state levels.

Aims

The overall purpose of the evaluation is to produce a high quality rigorous evaluation of the Strategy that will contribute to key learnings of what works in integrated care in the region and state as a whole. The results of the evaluation will be used to:

Monitor and improve processes

Share experiences

Develop the evidence base for integrated care

Develop understanding of costs and benefits of implementing changed models of care

Design and Method

The evaluation is using a mixed method approach, drawing on program logics and on data collected through surveys, case studies, a costing study and interviews with a range of stakeholders to explore strategy implementation, patient experiences and journey through care, impacts on service utilisation and costs.